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AMC Strategies Oct. 16, 2024

AMC Strategies1
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
-Benjamin Franklin

The AMC 10/12 is by no means an easy contest. However, it is recommended that anyone taking
the exam should enter the testing room with confidence in themselves. You should not neglect a
problem because it looks hard, nor should you neglect a problem because of its placement on the
test. Nevertheless, there are certain strategies that prove extremely effective on the AMC in
general.

Best practice
1. Reread the question.
2. Work cleanly.
3. Be aware of your time.
4. Check your work.
5. Learn how to guess
6. Advice for preparation

1. Reread the question

How to read
 The most common source of mistakes is misreading. (“I thought it was 2021, not 32021, I
didn’t see that it’s supposed to be nonzero, I picked the wrong choice.”) Thus, the most
efficient way to reduce mistakes is to start by reducing the mistakes from misreading the
question.
 When you first read the question, remember to take note of important details. One of the
easiest ways to slip is to mistake an integer for a positive integer, or a complex number
for a real number, to ignore bounds for a variable or ignore to read a condition. If you are
not making progress on the problem, read it again – perhaps you missed an important
detail somewhere.
 When answering, make sure to remember all the details given. More often than not, a
detail given is important in answering the problem. There are very few exceptions to this,
when more information is given than what is needed. In fact, if you didn’t use all the
information, you should be suspicious and check your work – perhaps there’s a mistake.
 Once you have an answer, re-read the question, even if you understand it completely. Is
your answer in the proper format? Is it in the correct units? Does it match up with the
choices, if there are any?

1
Some parts excerpted from VCSMS PRIME.
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2. Solve the problem

 One of the most useful techniques that exists is Engineer’s Induction. You may be
familiar with mathematical induction; this is the engineering analogue. When
encountered with a difficult problem, try smaller cases to see if you can find a noticeable
pattern. If you can confirm this problem for 3 to 4 cases, then you can probably assume
it’s true (without rigorous evidence!) and finish the problem. However, note that this is
frowned upon and after solving the problem always be sure to look at the intended
solution so you can improve (or else you never will).
 For certain geometry/algebraic problems, you can assume a certain special case and just
compute it for that specific one and assume it holds for all. For example, for a geometry
question regarding a triangle (without other conditions) you can assume it’s equilateral.
 The test is multiple choice! It is encouraged that you guess under certain circumstances,
namely if you have 14 to 15 problems solved, and you really want to make AIME, then
you should probably play it safe and leave the rest blank. However, if you are
significantly below are above that score, guess away! A recently calculated distribution
of answer choices has indicated that B, C, and D occur in the greatest frequency
compared to A and E. In practice, the expected value is not expected to have a significant
effect, and if you do happen to get lucky you will score extremely well. If not…
 Trust your intuition. If you have an innate feeling something is true, skip the rigor and
just assume it is. If you do end up with one of the answer choices, there is a high chance
you will be correct.

Organizing your scratch papers into sections

 Divide your paper up into four boxes on each side. Label each box with a question
number and keep your work for that question in there, so if you want to review
something, it’s easy to find.
 You might want to leave a half-page or even a full-page for the harder questions at the
end. It also helps to only work on the front of the paper, so you don’t accidentally lose
something that might be on the back.
 Write neatly so you can check your work at the end.

Draw large, precise, to-scale diagrams for geometry questions

 Bring graph papers (if it is allowed) and rulers. Draw your diagrams as large as possible
on the graph paper with ruler.
 When you have a very large diagram, it is easy to see when two lines might be parallel or
when a triangle might be a right triangle. Divide your paper up into four boxes on each
side. Label each box with a question number and keep your work for that question in
there, so if you want to review something. You still have to go through the math to fully
convince yourself these facts are true, but having an accurate diagram is a major tip-off to
what the answer might be.
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3. Be aware of time
Time management
 The principle of time management is trade-off. How much time should you spend solving
and how much time should you spend checking your work? Should you use your time to
solve this problem or that problem? It is important to make decisions like this quickly and
accurately.
 Make sure you always have a rough idea of how much time is left. Wear a watch, and
take note of what time the exam starts and ends. Usually the proctor will write overhead
the time left, but it’s always nicer to have a reference of how much time is left exactly.

4. Check your work and Avoid careless errors

This is easier said than done, but keeping your work organized on your scratch paper and
slowing down are two great ways to avoid accidentally multiplying incorrectly or blundering
something similar. Stay careful and attentive and your score could go way up.
Checking
 Checking is important. Correcting a mistake is faster and easier than solving a new
problem.
 Your checking method must be fast. Checking your work on one problem is always
sacrificing time for the next problem, thus you must have a fast way to check.
 Mark problems that you are unsure about. That way, you know to spend more time
checking problems you are unsure rather than sure about. Also, if you do not have
enough time to check all your problems, then check only those you are not sure about.
 Do not repeat your solutions when you check. Find a different way, use a different
method to check. If you use the same method, the tendency is for your brain to follow the
same path, and thus repeat the same reasoning, and thus repeat the mistake. If you can’t
find a different method, find a different order.

Meta-checking
 If you finish the exam early, check your answers.
 If you have a few minutes left and the next problems are too difficult for you, check your
answers.
 If you have a few minutes left, and you are a super-accurate person who never make
mistakes, it is better to continue solving than to waste time checking your answers.
 If you rarely catch your own mistakes when checking your answers, it doesn’t make
sense to check.
 If the contest does not penalize wrong answers, it is best to guess strategically.
 Remember that correcting an error takes less time than solving a new question. Double-
checking your work is usually a more efficient use of your time than proceeding to the
next question. Besides, problems that were solved are easier than problems yet to be
solved, so finding a mistake is faster than solving a new problem.
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 Try to balance your time. If you are very error-prone, it is better to include more checking
time at the end of the exam than to continue solving. On the other hand, if you are
accurate, it is better to continue answering, or increase your speed.

Checking methods
 Plugging in the answer is the clearest, simplest method. Use this method whenever
possible. In problems such as finding the value of x, sometimes plugging in is needed to
determine if there are extraneous solutions.
 Plug in an intermediate result. Sometimes the answer asks for something that you can’t
plug in – for example, looking for (2x + 1)2 when you solve for x in an equation. In this
case, you can’t plug in the answer, but you can plug in x.
 Use a different method. For example, complementary counting. If we want to count how
many two-digit positive integers that have at least one 7 as a digit, we can either do it
directly (one digit containing 7, both digits containing 7...) or we can do it indirectly
(number of two-digit numbers minus the two-digit numbers without 7).
 Use an example. Consider this problem: two non-zero real numbers, a and b, satisfy ab =
a − b. Find a possible value of a/b + b/a − ab. If you solved this problem using algebra,
it may help to use an example, such as a = 1, b = 1/2.

5. Learn how to guess

Guessing
 Eliminating one out of four choices improves your chances from 25% to 33%.
Eliminating two out of four choices improves it to 50%, which doubles the initial
chances.
 Guess with caution in an exam that penalizes guessing. For example, in the AMC, 1.5
points are awarded if a problem is left blank but 0 points are awarded if a problem is
incorrect. In this case, if you cannot improve your guess, it is better not to guess.
 Always try to solve the problem without choices first. Sometimes the choices distract
from solving the problem.

Consider this problem: the sum of four two-digit numbers is 221, none of the eight digits
are 0 and no two of them are the same. Which of the following is not included among the
eight digits?
(A) 2 (B) 4 (C) 6 (D) 8 (E) 5
If you consider the choices, you might be tempted to do it by trial-and-error. But if you
consider the problem alone, the idea of divisibility by 9 is immediate.
 Get into the mind of the problem-setter. The problem-setter wants to place choices that
can confuse and mislead, and answers that are likely to be the result of a miscalculation
or error in reasoning.
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Consider this problem: a digit watch displays hours and minutes with AM and PM. What
is the largest possible sum of the digits in the display?
(A) 17 (B) 19 (C) 21 (D) 23 (E) 22
The common mistake is to assume 12:59 produces the largest sum, leading to the answer
17. In a problem asking for maximums, the problem-setter will assume that some
students will choose a smaller number over a larger one. That means the designers would
include this mistake in the choices. Thus it is unlikely that the smallest answer will be
correct – so you should think twice before answering 17. In this case, the correct answer
is the last one, 23, corresponding to 9:59.

Meta-checking
 Consider the following choices:
(A) (−2, 1) (B) (−1, 2) (C) (2, −1) (D) (1, −2) (E) (4, 4)
The pair (4, 4) is a clear outlier. Outliers are most likely not correct choices. If (4, 4) were
the correct answer, then instead of solving the problem, we can merely use intermediate
arguments. For example, if you can argue that both numbers must be positive, or that
both numbers must be even, you can get the correct answer without solving the problem –
that would be poor problem design. Thus (4, 4) should be eliminated during guessing.
 Consider the following choices:
(A) 4/9 (B) 2/3 (C) 3/2 (D) 5/6 (E) 9/4
Test designers want to create choices that appear correct. They try to anticipate possible
mistakes. In this set of choices, the mistake they are hoping is confusing a number for its
inverse. In this case, we can eliminate 5/6, otherwise 6/5 would be included.
A similar example:
(A) −2 (B) – 1/2 (C) 1/3 (D) 1/2 (E) 2
The designers probably hope that students will confuse numbers with their inverses and
negations. Thus we exclude the choice 1/3.
Sometimes the outlier might hint at the correct answer. Consider these choices:
(A) 2 (B) π/2 (C) π (D) 2π (E) 4π
The outlier here is 2, all other choices have π. The problem designers were probably
considering that the student might forget to multiply by π. Hence the likely correct
answer is 2π, the answer we get by multiplying 2 and π.

Educated guessing
 The most common method in solving without actually solving is by example.
Consider this problem: the difference between the squares of two odd numbers is always
divisible by:
(A) 3 (B) 5 (C) 6 (D) 7 (E) 8
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Choose 1 and 3 as our odd numbers, we see the difference of the squares is 8, thus the
answer must be the last choice.
 Sometimes the choices help in solving the problem.
Consider this: two non-zero real numbers, a and b, satisfy ab = a − b. Find a possible
value of a/b + b/a − ab.
(A) −2 (B) −1/2 (C) 1/3 (D) 1/2 (E) 2
Seeing the choices, we see that the answer is a number. We plug in a = 1 to see that
b = 1/2 so the answer is 2. We are sure this is the only answer because only one answer
can be correct.
 Here’s another problem: let a, b, c be real numbers such that a − 7b + 8c = 4 and
8a + 4b − c = 7. Find a2 − b2 + c2.
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 4 (D) 7 (E) 8
Again, seeing the choices, the answer is a number. Thus we can simply let c be anything,
for example, we can let c = 0 to reduce it to a linear equation, and then we can compute
the answer.
 Instead of solving the problem, sometimes we can plug in the solutions one-by-one and
see which one works. Consider this problem:
In triangle ABC, BD is the angle bisector of ABC, and AB = BD. Moreover, E is a
point on AB such that AE = AD. If ACB = 36, find BDE.
(A) 24 (B) 18 (C) 15 (D) 12
The easiest method is to simply plug in each of the answers as BDE and see which one
does not result in a contradiction, which gives us the answer.

Choice elimination
 Parity is one way to eliminate wrong answers. Consider the difference between the sum
of the first 2021 even counting numbers and the sum of the first 2021 odd counting
numbers.
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 2021 (E) 4042
Without computation we see the answer must be odd. Thus we can exclude three of the
choices already. Parity is also an easy way to check your answers, as outlined below.
 Partial knowledge is helpful in solving. Consider solving for the number of non-negative
integral solutions to a + b + c = 6.
(A) 22 (B) 25 (C) 27 (D) 28 (E) 29
Even if you do not remember the exact formula, you may remember that the answer is a
binomial coefficient that involves the number 6. The only choice that appears in the first
10 rows of Pascal’s triangle is 28.
 Sometimes you can eliminate all the choices as to produce the correct answer, without
solving the problem.
Consider solving for the non-zero value of x that satisfies (7x)14 = (14x)7.
(A) 1/7 (B) 2/7 (C) 1 (D) 7 (E) 14
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This can be solved very quickly: 1/7 does not work because the left-hand side will
become 1 while the right-hand side will not, 1 and 7 cannot work because left-hand side
will be odd and the right-hand side will be even, and finally 14 will make the right side
too big. Thus the answer is 2/7, no solving needed.
 A final example: suppose we want to know the product of all odd positive integers less
than 10000.

By the outlier-removal rule, we would remove the middle choices and the last choice, as
we suspect that the numerator should be 10000!. We confirm this: take a prime number
and see what power it belongs to the answer. Let’s see we have a prime number p that is
slightly below 5000. Then p should appear in the answer exactly once (2p would be even,
3p would be too big). Now we look at the choices. Prime p appears in 5000! once as the
factor p, and it appears in 10000! twice as p and 2p. It appears in choice (A) zero times,
in choice (B) and (C) twice, so the answers are either (D) or (E). But we can eliminate
choice (E) as it does not contain any odd primes between 5000 and 10000, thus the
answer is (D), confirming our meta-guess.

6. Final Notes / Strategies

Be early
Try to go to the classroom at least 15 minutes before the scheduled time with student ID
available.

Be calm
When in doubt, bash. Go with your gut. Eat a good breakfast. Good luck, have fun, and eat your
vegetables! Also, drink a lot of water.

Be organized
It is recommended to have at least 25 sheets of scratch paper (and some latticed papers) and at
least 4 pencils, along with your favorite snacks, water,..
Give each problem its own sheet of paper and write neatly so you can easily check your work.
For more difficult problems (particularly those in the last 5), try using 2 or 3 sheets of paper
each. Even for the earlier ones, where you might only need ⅓ a sheet of paper per problem, still
use an entire sheet, front and back, for that one problem. It makes checking your work and
finding your ideas for problems so much easier. If you like, you might also want to leave little
notes around your work so that you can easily come back to what you were thinking about for
that problem.